Colin went rigid. Now was not the time, and yet he could not bear for any part of this night to distress her. He was in heaven. He wanted nothing more than for her to be also. “I am afraid of what will happen if you see me now. If you turned me away, I do not think I would survive it.”
Her lower lip quivered. Then she asked, “Do you have one of your masks with you?”
“You ask me to withdraw?” He stared down at her with wide eyes. “Are you insane? I am
inside
you.”
“Not all the way,” she argued. “Not as I need you to be.” Her voice took on the pleading, cajoling note that he had never been able to resist.
She would kill him, he realized with an odd mixture of pride and wryness. She would never be passive in the bedroom, just as she had never been passive out of it. He half feared the day when she’d be fully awakened sexually. How would he survive the full assault of her feminine wiles? He wasn’t yet buried to the hilt and he felt like he was dying.
“It excites me,” she whispered, releasing the stunning statement with panting breaths. “The sight of you in the mask.” Her fingers came up and traced the shape of his lips. “You have such a wicked mouth. I have dreamt of it. Longed for it to move across my skin and whisper hot words of wanting.”
Shuddering with desire, Colin pushed restlessly into her streaming cunt. She was melting around his cock. Her nipples were hard against his chest, her stomach was quivering against his.
“It would please me to watch you. Do not deny me.” Her hands cupped his buttocks and tugged, pulling him fractionally deeper.
She became tighter the deeper he went, her virgin tissues resisting the remolding of her body to fit his.
“Please . . .” she breathed with such heartrending yearning. “Do not leave me in the darkness at this moment in my life.”
Cursing, Colin wrenched himself free, his body shaking with its need. He rolled from the bed and stalked on nerveless legs to the armoire where his valise waited. Reaching inside it, he withdrew the mask, which he had kept as a tangible reminder of the stolen moments he had shared with Amelia.
He stared down at the gleaming white item in his hands with a building resentment for its purpose—that of keeping Colin Mitchell away from the woman he loved.
How he wished he would have seen where this deception would lead when he first purchased the mask! One look at Amelia—a sip of water for a man dying of thirst—was all he had expected the ruse to provide.
“Hurry,” she urged in the throaty voice of a consummate seductress. The feminine allure so practiced and studied in other women was simply innate to her.
Colin lifted the half mask to his face and tied the black satin ribbons that would hold it in place, then retied the ribbon that restrained his queue. Turning his head, he looked at her and knew he would not leave this room as the same man who had entered it.
She reclined against the piled pillows, her legs and arms crossed modestly, the blindfold gone. In her verdant gaze he saw lust, longing, and appreciation of such magnitude that he could scarcely breathe.
Pivoting on his heel, he faced her directly, affording her a clear view of his raging cock and taut musculature. He watched her swallow hard and understood how intimidating the sight of him must be. She was a tall woman, but he was still much taller. He was more than twice her size, his body hardened by both his common lineage and frequent physical activity.
And he was in full rut. Thick veins pulsed with his raging blood, and he fisted the shaft to ease the pain of it.
“Does the sight of me this way arouse you,” he asked, “or frighten you?”
Amelia licked her lips. “I am not frightened,” she whispered. “I am nervous and perhaps apprehensive, but I do not fear you.”
“You are a strong woman,” he praised, striding swiftly toward her.
Without preliminaries, he kneeled on the bed and climbed over her, tugging her arm out of the way so he could claim a nipple with his mouth. He attended the stiff peak with hard, rhythmic suction, urging her silently to make some sound of her delight.
Her hands cupped the back of his head and held him to her breast. “Come inside me,” she whispered. “I hate this feeling of uncertainty and ignorance.”
Sitting back on his heels, Colin pulled her legs over either side of his own, spreading her thighs wide to expose her cunt to his gaze. With the angle of the pillows and her semi-reclined position, she had a clear view. Before she could register the size of her tiny pink slit compared to the girth and length of his cock, he was in her, pushing the thick head into the tender opening.
She whimpered and dug her nails into his thighs.
Holding her hips, he took her, rocking gently but relentlessly deeper and deeper. His gaze moved between the place of their joining and her beautiful face.
With his back shadowing her from the rapidly dwindling glow of the fading fire, he could not discern color, but he saw the telltale shimmer of sweat on her brow, and her eyes glistened with a sheen of tears.
“Am I hurting you?” he gasped, his fingers bruising her as she responded to his voice by rippling along the buried length of his cock. She was so damn tight and hot, it felt as if he were fucking into a tightly closed fist.
“No . . .” Her voice was thready and faraway sounding.
Colin lifted one of her hands from his skin and set it over her distended clitoris. “Stroke yourself,” he instructed.
To his utter delight she obliged without embarrassment, her long, slender fingers circling the slick flesh with only slight hesitation.
Her lovely cunt responded as he had known it would, clenching and grasping at him with renewed fervor. With every suck, he pushed deeper, groaning with the ecstasy of it, gulping in desperate breaths of air filled with the scents of sex and honeysuckle.
She began to writhe and mewl in a show of such wanton craving, he would wonder later how he managed to work inside her completely without coming at the midway point. Finally, with a last desperate lunge, he hit the end of her, the sensation of being balls-deep inside her enough to make his eyes tear.
Amelia cried out as Montoya’s hot, heavy length finally struck deep. A flare of torturous relief spread outward from the aching spot inside her that begged to be rubbed, and then coiled tight again.
When he held still, she struggled, circling her hips, grinding against the root of his shaft. The growl that left him was more animal than human, and her body shivered in response, spurred to greater lust by the sound.
He held her still with powerful hands, his gaze burning from within the eyeholes of the mask. His beautiful mouth was hard, his jaw taut.
“Why won’t you move?” she cried.
“Because I am about to blow, and I refuse to go without you.”
“I am ready!” Her voice was high with her distress, her womb clenching and tightening in a way that was nearly painful.
With effortless strength, he scooped her up and lifted to his knees, impaling her deeper on the rock-hard length of his cock. Amelia clung to his broad shoulders, her mouth suckling across the salty, whisker-roughened expanse of his throat. The room spun as he rearranged their positions, every movement sliding her over him until she bit him in retaliation for her sexual frustration.
Montoya cursed and pushed her away from him.
“Ride,” he said roughly.
He sat on the edge of the bed, her legs astride his, his erection buried deep. So deep. Canting his arms back, he supported his torso and gave her full access to use him as she willed. The display he made was searingly erotic, his abdomen laced tight with muscle, his furred chest damp with sweat.
And the mask. Dear God, the mask added a dark, alluring mystery that urged her to recklessness.
“I—”
“Now!” he barked, making her jump.
Her shoulders went back and her chin lifted in answer to his challenge. She thought this must be difficult for him for reasons she had not considered before. He made love with the expertise of a man who had his choice of women, which suggested the marring of his face might have been a recent event. Perhaps she was the first woman to welcome him to her bed since the injury was inflicted. The thought added poignancy to an already remarkable event.
Amelia decided in that moment that she would love him well, with all that she had, better than any other woman ever could. She would reach for the turmoil she sensed inside him and soothe it with her passion, showing him with her body that it was his heart that lured her to him.
Setting her hands on his shoulders for balance, she pushed onto her knees and lifted, sliding her sex upward along the length of him. When she lowered, the feel of the broad head of his cock stroking over that quivering spot inside her made her gasp and shake violently.
“That’s it,” he praised in a dark whisper, watching her through thick black lashes. “See how well I fit you? I was made for your pleasure.”
Biting her lower lip, she repeated the movement, venturing slowly as she found the way of it. Her thumb brushed across a scar that marred his shoulder, the wound so old, it had long since turned silver. She caressed it as she undulated, feeling the circular shape surrounded by ragged edges. In the back of her mind the injury bothered her, prodded at her . . .
Then he spoke, and everything else scattered from her mind.
“Sweet Amelia. You are mine.”
Amelia rose and wrapped her arms around his torso, tilting her head to fit her mouth over his, lifting and falling, moaning at the feel of her swollen nipples brushing across the light dusting of coarse hair on his chest.
Claiming him as he claimed her.
Montoya thrust one hand into her tresses, holding her close as he murmured encouragement into her mouth, his hips circling beneath her in breathtaking thrusts, stealing her wits.
Stealing her heart.
As she gained confidence, she moved faster, breathing hard from her exertions, drops of sweat trickling down between her bouncing breasts.
“I want you this way daily.” His words were heavy, slurred with pleasure. “I want you to feel empty when I am not inside you. Hungry. Starved for me.”
Amelia knew it would be that way. She was mindless with lust, grinding, writhing, pumping onto his thick, straining erection as if she had done this before. As if she knew what she was doing.
His teeth nipped her throat and she cried out, everything clenching inside her until he cursed from the feel of it.
He
was driving her to this madness—with his big body reclined, his eyes heavy-lidded behind the mask, his lips glistening from her mouth. He looked like a pagan sex god. Exotically beautiful. Endlessly controlled. Content to lie back and be pleasured by a wanton whose sole focus was the pursuit of orgasm.
With her lips against his cheek, she whispered, “Fuck me,” surprising herself with how easily the crude word rolled off her tongue.
A brutal shudder wracked Montoya’s frame in response.
“Make me
come,”
she coaxed breathlessly, riding him still. “I want it . . . I want
you
. Wild. Deep. I need you with me—”
Before she could blink, he had twisted, pinning her to the bed. Feet on the floor and fists in the counterpane, he drove powerfully into her, every perfect downstroke wrenching a cry of rapture from her throat.
He loomed over her, watching her through the mask, his chest heaving, his abdomen lacing, his buttocks clenching beneath her calves as she lifted to meet his every plunge. His body was a study in sexual power. Built to fuck a woman into addiction.
The coiling tension in her womb tightened, forming a hard knot that made her head thrash against the brutal pleasure. And then it broke free in a riot of sensation, burning across her skin, seizing her lungs, spasming inside her in endless rapid ripples that worshipped his straining cock.
The guttural roar that ripped from his throat brought tears to her eyes and a name to her lips. He paused in midstroke, rigid, and she mewled a protest, undulating beneath him in delirious pleasure.
He resumed, increasing the strength and speed of his thrusts until he swelled inside her, groaning through gritted teeth. Embedded in her to the deepest point, his body jerked in time to the hot, thick wash of his ejaculations inside her.
It was savage and primitive and beautiful. He curled around her, his weight supported on his forearms beneath her back, his skin sticking to hers with their mingled sweat.
“I love you,” he whispered ardently, his tongue licking the trails of her tears. “I love you.”
Amelia reached for the ribbons that secured the mask.
Chapter 11
I
t was dark in the room, the banked fire incapable of casting a shadow more than a foot away from the grate. Sight was difficult, and yet Simon’s instincts urged him to heed their warning.
Moving cautiously, he turned his head and found the space in the bed beside him to be empty. He exhaled carefully, maintaining the deep, even rhythm of sleep.
Something had woken him, and since he was sleeping with a woman who would kill him if necessary, he knew ignoring the disturbance would not be wise.
He looked toward the window and saw the gleam of silver moonlight on strands of golden hair. Lysette had the drapes parted a scant inch or two and was presently staring out the window.
“What are you doing?” he whispered, sitting up.
Her head might have turned toward him, but he could not be sure.
“I heard noises outside.”
“What do you see?”
The curtain closed. “Three riders. One went inside briefly, I assume to wake the innkeeper. Then they continued on.”
Shivering, Simon threw off the covers and moved to the grate. “I doubt anyone would go to such trouble for directions at this time of night.”
“My thoughts exactly.”
“Could you hear them? Were they French?”
There was a brief flare of light as she lit a match; then the wick of a single taper took over the illumination. “I think they were English.”
He frowned into the flickering fire. “Perhaps I should wake Maria.”
“No need. They rode forward, not backward. Whatever they are looking for, it has yet to be found.”
As heat began to radiate outward from the grate, Simon stood and faced Lysette. She looked tired, and a crease marred the side of her lovely face. She wore her cloak over her chemise and clutched it to her chest with white-knuckled fingers.
He gestured toward the bed. “Fine. Let’s go back to sleep. I am still sore from that blasted carriage and could use a bit more time on my back instead of my arse.”
Lysette nodded wearily and sank into the chair she had been reading in earlier.
“Bonne nuit.”
“Bloody hell.” Scowling, he asked, “Did you fall asleep there?”
She blinked up at him.
“Oui.”
“On purpose?”
“Oui.”
Simon ran a hand through his hair and prayed for patience. “I do not bite or snore or drool. I mean no offense when I say that I have no interest in tumbling you. The bed is perfectly safe.”
“The bed may be,” she said, watching him impassively, “but I have some doubts as to whether you are.”
He opened his mouth to argue, then threw up his hands. “Bah! Rot in the chair, then.”
Freezing, he hurried back to the bed and crawled between now-cooled linens. Curling into a ball, he prayed the warmth of the renewed fire would reach the bed soon.
“Curse you,” he grumbled, glaring down the length of the bed at her. “It would be much warmer if there were two of us in here.”
“You have more reason to want me dead than alive,” she pointed out in a far too reasonable tone.
“At this moment, truer words were never spoken,” he snapped. “The only reason I am not strangling you is because killing you would rob me of your body heat!”
Her pretty lips thinned primly.
“This is ridiculous, Lysette.” He sat up, too frustrated to even attempt sleep. The impracticality of sleeping in the cramped wing chair after a long day of travel was so out of character for her. She was faultlessly practical, as was everyone who lived by their wits. “Why would I kill you now, when I have not before?”
She shrugged, but the way her gaze darted nervously belied the careless gesture.
Heaving out a long-suffering sigh, Simon once again tossed back the covers and stalked toward her. When she wielded a knife from between the edges of her cloak, he was not surprised.
“Put that away.”
“Stay back.”
“I am not attracted to you,” he reiterated slowly. “And even if I was, I have no need to force myself on an unwilling woman.”
Lysette frowned suspiciously. “I am fine in the chair.”
“Liar. You look exhausted, and I cannot afford to drag you along while I attempt to clear Mitchell’s name. You must carry your own weight.”
She bristled at that. “I will not be a burden.”
“Damned if you won’t after a night spent sleepless and frozen. You will become ill and useless.”
Pushing to her feet, she said, “I can take care of myself. Go back to bed and leave me in peace!”
Simon opened his mouth to argue further, then shook his head instead. He once again climbed between the sheets and turned his back toward the other side of the bed. A few moments later, the taper was extinguished. Shortly afterward he heard delicate snoring.
Faced with a deepening puzzle, Simon lay awake for some time.
Amelia studied the masked man in repose beside her and wondered how deeply he slept.
“We will wait until the sunrise to remove it,” Montoya had said earlier.
“Why not now?” she countered, desperate to see beneath the now intrusive barrier. Her heart was smitten and her body no longer innocent. But what they shared could be no more than infatuation—it could not be love—if she did not see all sides of him.
“I want nothing to mar this evening,” he had explained, withdrawing from her body and moving to the washstand behind the screen in the corner. He’d returned with a damp cloth and washed between her thighs, then cleansed himself before joining her in the bed. “In the morning, I will bare myself to you, strengthened by the memories of a blissful, perfect night in your arms.”
In the end, she had reluctantly agreed, unwilling to be at odds with him over the matter of a few hours.
With his back to the headboard and her body curved to his side, he had asked her to share a beloved memory from her past. She had chosen a tale about Colin, relating how she had conquered her fear of heights by climbing a tree during a game of hide-and-seek.
“He passed below me several times,” she said, her cheek resting over Montoya’s heart. “I half hoped he would find me quickly, because it was frightening clinging to that limb, but the desire to surprise him was too great to give myself away.”
His hand caressed up and down the length of her back. “You wanted to win,” he corrected, laughing that low, deep laugh she had adored from the moment she heard it.
“That, too.” She smiled. “When he finally forfeited, I was so pleased with myself. Colin spent his allowance on a new ribbon to mark the conquering of that fear.”
Montoya sighed. “He must have loved you a great deal.”
“I think he did, although he never told me. I would have given anything to hear those words from him.” Her fingers sifted through the hair on his chest.
“Actions speak louder than words.”
“I tell myself that. I still have that ribbon. It is one of my greatest treasures.”
“What do you imagine your life would have been like now, if you two had never been parted?”
Lifting her head, she’d met his questioning gaze. “I have imagined it in hundreds of scenarios. The most likely one, I think, would be that St. John would have taken Colin under his wing.”
“Would you be married?”
“I have always hoped so. But that would depend upon him.”
“He would have asked you,” Montoya said with conviction.
Amelia smiled. “What leads you to be so certain?”
“He loved you deeply. I have no doubt. You were simply too young for him at the time, and he was not in a position to offer for you.” He brushed the backs of his fingers along her cheekbone. “Do you love him still?”
She hesitated, wondering at the wisdom of confessing a lingering affection for one man while warming the bed of another.
“Always tell me the truth,” he urged softly, “and you will never be wrong.”
“Part of me will love him forever. He helped to mold me into the person I am today. He is weaved into the very fabric of my life.”
Montoya had kissed her then, sweetly and with deep reverence. Breathless and enamored, she asked him to share a part of his past with her, expecting that he might speak of his lost love. He did not.
He chose to speak of his livelihood and the dangerous work he had done for the Crown of England. He shared how he’d traveled the length and breadth of the Continent, never having a true home or family, until the day he sought to resign and was instead embroiled in a life-threatening intrigue.
“That is why I attempted to maintain my distance from you,” he said. “I did not want to taint your life with my mistakes.”
“Is that how your face was scarred?” she asked, her fingertips lightly following the edge of the mask where it touched his skin.
He went rigid. “Beg your pardon?”
Instantly contrite for having distressed him, Amelia rushed to say, “I can understand your fear, but your disfigurement will not alter my affection for you.”
“Amelia . . .” He seemed at a loss for words.
The conversation had died then, and they had simply clung to each other as Montoya fell asleep. She remained awake, her mind shifting through a multitude of thoughts. She planned what to say to Ware and Maria and mentally rehearsed how she would ask St. John for his assistance. She catalogued the various aches and pains that heralded her new awareness as a woman and speculated on how her relationship with Montoya would proceed once they were freed from all the unknowns that plagued them. She also wondered at her outrageous behavior of the last week and what it meant.
Only Maria truly understood what a monster Lord Welton was. That his blood ran through Amelia’s veins made her ill at times. Externally, she was clearly his issue. Was she also like her father in ways she could not see? It was terrifying to realize that everything she had done these last few days had been selfishly motivated. She had disregarded the feelings and concerns of those who cared for her—Ware, Maria, and St. John—in favor of her desire to be with Montoya. Was she truly her father’s daughter?
Amelia gazed into the licking flames and thought of the mask, ruminating about the man beneath it. The urge to peek beneath the guise was pressing. She tried to excuse the action with the reasoning that it was the mystery of his identity that had goaded her to act so rashly, not a defect in her character.
But what if Montoya was a light sleeper? What if he caught her and became angry? She dreaded the thought of exchanging furious words.
Perhaps she could test the depth of his slumber in some way . . . ?
Her hand lifted from the hard expanse of his abdomen, and her fingertips ran lightly along his thigh. The muscle twitched, but he made no other movement. Amelia tried again, caressing him with deeper pressure. This time, he moved not at all.
She became hopeful. He had loved her long and well, and extended journeys were known to make many a traveler weary.
Raising her head, her gaze roamed admiringly over the sculpted beauty of his chest. The scar on his shoulder was more visible now, the room lightened considerably by the fire Montoya had stoked into a hearty blaze to banish the pervasive chill. She studied the bullet hole with sympathy, guessing by the size and many radiating lines that it had been a nasty wound.
She kissed the evidence of injury, her lips brushing featherlight over the damaged flesh. The tempo of his breathing changed, and his nipples tightened while she watched in awe.
How fascinating the human body was. Tonight she had learned so much about her own. Amelia felt the sudden urge to know everything about his.
With the memories of his lovemaking still fresh and burning in her mind, she extended her tongue and licked across the tiny bead of darkened flesh. His skin was salty, the texture firmer than hers. She loved it, as she was beginning to love all of him.
Mimicking his earlier ministrations to her breasts, Amelia wrapped her lips around his nipple and sucked gently. He stirred, but not in the way she had anticipated.
Her thigh was draped over his, her knee bent and leg raised. As his cock swelled, she felt it, and she turned her head to see the thickening outline of his erection beneath the bedclothes. Her blood heated and began to move sluggishly. More surprising yet, her mouth watered.
She glanced at his face beneath lowered lashes. In the shadows of the eyeholes he appeared to be sleeping, with no telltale shimmer from liquid eyes to betray his cognizance.
Did she dare to explore further?
Her curiosity raging, she did not debate the question long. She slid downward, pulling the counterpane with her, eventually exposing his glorious cock to her avid gaze.
“You play with fire, love.”
Montoya’s voice startled her. She looked up at him and found him watching her with slumberous, burning eyes.
“How long have you been awake?” she asked.
“I’ve yet to fall asleep.” His wicked mouth curved, revealing his dimple.
“Why did you keep your silence?”
“I wanted to see how far you would go.” His hand lifted, his fingertips catching and caressing a stray curl of her hair. “Curious kitten,” he murmured.
“Do you mind?”
“Never. Your touch is vital to me.”
Considering that permission to proceed, she returned her attention to his erection. Amelia ran one fingertip from tip to root and smiled when it jerked at her touch.
“I find it astonishing that you fit in me,” she confessed.
Remembering the rapturous feel of her cunt around his cock, Colin could not find the voice to reply. He was ferociously aroused and leashing himself by sheer will alone. When she’d begun to touch him, he had thought it by chance. Then she’d lifted her head and branded him forever with the feel of her lips upon the wound that had nearly killed him. It was the gunshot that had separated them so many years ago. The shot he’d taken while trying to save her.